Movie Review - Hotel for Dogs

by Alex Popp


Who let the dogs in?

Emma Roberts (the niece of Julia Roberts) and Disney Channel star Jake T. Austin play two orphans who learn what imagination can do in "Hotel for Dogs."

Animals are strictly forbidden at Andi and her little brother Bruce's foster home. But for Friday, the adorable dog they secretly care for, they're ready to risk everything. They finally find Friday an ideal shelter, a huge abandoned hotel that Bruce transforms thanks to his engineering genius. In what has become an incredible paradise for dogs, Friday is soon joined by all kinds of furry friends, so many in fact that their barks alert the neighbors...and the local pound, who can't understand the disappearance of all the stray dogs. Andi and Bruce will have to call on all their friends and all their imagination to stop the hotel's secret from being discovered.

"Hotel for Dogs" was actually slightly above my expectations. It gets more and more predictable as it goes along, but at the end I smiled, thinking, "This is the way we should be treating man's best friend." I am a dog-lover.

Rated PG for some crude humor and mild language.

Two and a half stars (out of four) for "Hotel for Dogs."

Review by Alex Popp for The Animation Empire blog.